Hidden Cemetery & President On Ag Research

Hidden Cemetery & President On Ag Research plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

President Obama is continuing his road trip and spoke at a town hall meeting in Atkinson, Illinois. The President told residents that he wants the U.S. to be number one in biofuels and also to not listen to all the rumor coming out of Washington about possible new burdensome government regulations. He also told the crowd that we should not cut agricultural research funding in the name of deficit reduction.

OBAMA: We know that we’ve got to invest in basic research. That’s part of what made us the most productive agricultural power house in the world. So we don’t want to cut back agricultural research...in order to pay for it we’ve got to get rid of some things.

Agriculture across the U.S. takes a lot of land. In a lot of cases farmers and ranchers will clear old areas to make room for new crops like the vineyard manager in Salem, Oregon who wound up getting a bit of a surprise recently. Ken Johnston was in the process of planting a new vineyard when he came across 3 headstone bases. No headstones, just the bases. What he had stumbled across was a long-post pioneer cemetery. Johnston preserved the site which prompted the Oregon Historic Cemeteries Program to award him with an Oregon Heritage Stewardship Certificate.

Now with today’s Food Forethought, here’s Lacy Gray.

With all the high demand for fresh local produce some sneaky farmers’ market vendors are selling foods falsely as “locally grown”; proving once again that just because something is labeled organic or natural doesn’t necessarily mean it is. In the last few years there have been reports, mostly out of the Southern California area, of vendors selling produce they themselves had no hand in growing; but that hasn’t stopped them from making a tidy profit off of unknowing customers. Trouble is there isn’t a national standard for farmers’ markets to adhere to; each market is responsible for establishing their own set of rules and standards. So while the majority of farmers you meet at your local market are the honest, hard working, real deal variety, there is the chance that a deceptive vendor has managed to squeeze under the radar. The best recourse to take is the easiest, engage the farmer your buying from, ask them about their farm, where it is, what’s best to buy right now, and perhaps even if they would give tours of their farm. While it’s down right pithy that there are deceptive vendors don’t let these few bad apples spoil the whole bunch.

Thanks Lacy. That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.